[a2128]

From my understanding, the scammers themselves are typically a half/whole continent away, in a jurisdiction that doesn't care too much and is easily bought by money. Meanwhile the people picking up cash are sometimes not even connected to the scam, they can be Uber drivers who were requested to pick up a package, as was the case when a man in Ohio tragically shot someone sent by scammers [0]. Unfortunately the Internet has made it really easy to do things like this without stepping foot in the country

[0] https://apnews.com/article/uber-driver-killed-scam-4998a42b2...

[Nextgrid]

At least in the UK many (most?) scams operate via a robocall claiming you owe taxes/a bill/etc and you need to bank transfer the money to a local UK account of a money mule.

The money mules are either knowingly doing it or recruited on social media/etc thinking it’s a job and they’re running payroll by receiving and forwarding money.

Law enforcement should be proactively attacking this supply chain by posing as willing money mules - not only they’d potentially be able to unravel the whole network but at the very least act as an effective DDoS on the practice and making that method unprofitable for the scammers.

[vidarh]

I sat in a taxi once when he received a call purporting to be from HMRC about his taxes. I think I managed to intervene forcefully enough to make him understand that no, HRMC would not ask him to call back via Vyber or whatever, and no they'd never ask him to send money without actually sending a letter.

But this only after he had called them back while I was listening in - that was when I interrupted.

A big problem is so many people have situations ongoing with HMRC (as did that taxi driver) that it seems plausible to them, because it's all confusing anyway, so make the call a bit scary and people seem to shut off all critical senses.

I stressed to him that if he got any calls like that again and was unsure, to always hang up and call the numbers on the HMRC website, and hopefully he got the point...